Thursday, November 24, 2016

I have so loved hearing about schools that run mock Caldecott Awards but I have also been hearing from librarians and teachers how they struggle to buy new books. How they often supplement the classroom library out of their own pockets.

Around this time last year I held a fundraiser to send sets of 10 new picture books to schools in need.
I thought maybe there was a way of turning a drawing into a pile of new picture
books. Because while there’s nothing as comforting as curling up with an
old favorite, there’s something thrilling about turning the first page of a brand new one.

I was hoping to be able to fund 60 books for six schools. Thanks to your
generosity we raised around $3500, which enabled us to send 200
books to 20 schools.

So! It's that time again!

Here's how it works.

This painting is for sale on eBay. It was on the cover of the Horn Book Magazine Awards Edition in June, 2016. Eagle eyes will spot Last Stop on Market Street and The Lion and the Mouse, The Snowy Day and Winnie the Pooh.

The listing is live and runs until December 3rd.
I have partnered with the wonderful bookstore, The Curious Reader, who have helped me select 10 beautiful, funny, rich, thoughtful picture books to tempt young readers.

So now I just needa) People to bid on the drawing. Click here!b) Librarians and teachers to enter the draw.(Which
you can do by leaving your name and the name and location of your
school in the comments below. Only US schools, I’m afraid.)c) You to help spread the word! (Please share far and wide!)

Thank you, all!ps. If you'd like to make a separate donation, you can do so here and receive a signed print from Finding Winnie!

Thursday, January 14, 2016

The days immediately after giving birth to each of my children passed in a surreal fog. I remember waking in the night to nurse and feeling flooded with wonder again and again – that this miraculous creature had come into being. This child I had dreamed of, hoped for, imagined, dared-not-imagine, was actually real.

I am feeling much the same way right now.

As I wrote in a Facebook post last week, “2015 was something of a fraught year for book making. I have been learning from all the discussions and am trying to use what I've learned to feel encouraged and inspired rather than paralyzed. Emphasis on trying.
But the year is young! And there are books to be made!”

There was such an outpouring of love and encouragement in response to this. I was – and remain – so grateful.
I decided to banish all thought of the Caldecott from my head. But it kept creeping back in. I wrestled with it all weekend.
Who are you to hope? I asked myself, in Maggie Smith’s most withering voice… and then I imagined getting the call, imagined every detail. When I imagine something, it usually ends up in a drawing, not as a reality. I was pretty sure that the very act of imagining it was enough to prevent it coming true.
In my sleeplessness I should have picked up an old friend of a book but instead I wandered the internet, fueling the fire.
And then I read three things which helped enormously.
The first was Kimberly Brusker Bradley’s blogpost.
“I want to win the Newbery so bad it makes my teeth hurt”, she wrote.
“And yet, it doesn't really matter at all.
Both of these things are absolutely true.”

And this made me realize there’s nothing wrong with hoping.

The second was Susan Kusel’s post, which reminded me that whatever happened on Monday morning was out of my control, and unpredictable, and whether I hoped or fretted or slept like a cat, it wouldn’t make a jot of difference.

And her words together with this letter to which she linked, (which I now learn was written by Sarah Bean Thompson, a member of the committee. Thank you Sarah!), made me feel calm.
It gave me enormous confidence in the process and the committee. I don't envy their task, but I have such respect for their commitment and patience and attentiveness and open mindedness and willingness to work together. I realized that they would choose the right book, whichever book that happened to be.

And so I went to sleep.

I’m lying. I didn't really sleep at all.
I’d heard the call usually comes before 6:30am. So by 6:31am, I’d resigned myself that it was not to be. I hopped in the shower. Made Eggy’s school lunch. Told Ed we could relax. It wasn’t going to happen. We had a lovely sad-happy moment of realizing that Caldecott or no, we were very lucky people indeed.
And then the phone rang.
The rest is a blur. I think my legs gave way. I may have sobbed. It’s still utterly surreal that your life can turn around in a span of minutes. It will take a lot longer to adjust to the idea that my name falls at the end of this list of luminaries: Virginia Lee Burton. Maurice Sendak. Ezra Jack Keats. Barbara Cooney. The Provensons. O. Zelinsky. Wiesner. Selznick. Pinkney. Stead. Raschka. Klassen. Floca. Santat.

I’m so grateful to the committee and can’t wait to thank you all in person.
The sound of a room of laughing, cheering librarians coming down the wire will stay with me forever.

I am so fortunate to have worked with Little, Brown and thank everyone there for their part in making this book.
Susan Rich, our editor, is on every page of Finding Winnie, and this award belongs every bit as much to her.
Without Lindsay Mattick’s extraordinary family story, this book wouldn’t exist. I thank her for sharing it with me.
My studio mates are my best friends and five years on, I can’t believe how lucky I am that we get to do this together every day.
Ed, who held me up in the kitchen when my legs went wobbly, and who holds me up each and every day, my children and fake children, all of whom I adore, and dear family and friends who make my life and the world a better place,
My father, to whom this book is dedicated,
John Schu who has loved this book enough for all of us,
Laura Amy Schlitz who I've decided is my fairy godmother, warm and wise,
Nancy Gallt and Marietta Zacker, thank you.
And to all the librarians and teachers and ambassadors of children’s literature for reading and reviewing, discussing and sharing books with unflagging dedication, respectful debate and contagious enthusiasm. Your extraordinary efforts to get those books into the hands of children, your love for books and those who read them is indeed encouraging and inspiring.
And thank you to EVERYONE for your kind words.
I am overflowing with gratitude.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

The story of Finding Winnie takes place in the context of WW1. Winnie, named for Winnipeg, became the mascot of the Second Canadian Infantry Brigade, and by all accounts she provided entertainment, distraction, comfort and solace to the troops, many of whom were very young and far from home. This illustration of Winnie posing with the soldiers was inspired by a photograph from the author, Lindsay Mattick's family archives. Harry is in the second row, second from left, seated.

Growing up in Australia, we learned about the Great War from an Australian perspective. Egypt and Gallipoli and ANZAC biscuits. (My own great uncle, Lancelot Blackall, below, served with the Light Horse Brigade.)

So it was interesting to delve into Canadian history. I read about soldiers' kits, Ross Rifles, MacAdam Shield-Shovels, and their doomed boots. Ross Rifles were long and heavy, performed poorly in damp conditions and would often jam after first firing, making it impossible to reload. As the name suggests, the MacAdam Shield-Shovel was designed to be a multi-purpose shield and shovel. Unfortunately it weighed over five pounds which made it difficult to carry, the shovel’s blade was incapable of stopping
the penetration of gunfire even from the smallest of enemy calibre
arms, and the fact that it contained a large sight-hole made it almost useless for shoveling. As for the boots, they were made with pressed cardboard soles, which rapidly disintegrated in the mud.

This image of Harry's regiment marching in the incessant rain on the Salisbury Plain mirrors the composition of his departure earlier in the book. The First World War was all about hordes of young men, embarking on journeys with uncertain destinations.

We don't see anything of the actual War in Finding Winnie, but in the illustrations I wanted to allude to the devastation it caused. We all know the iconic photographs of soldiers leaving for war, hanging from train carriages, waving hats, reaching out for a last grasp of a wife's hand.

I set up this scene with Harry's departure from Winnipeg...

...and echoed it with his return. The families are the same ones, four years later. We see the survivors and the gaps where men – or limbs – were lost.

Monday, November 2, 2015

When my not-yet editor Susan Rich first sent me Lindsay Mattick's manuscript for Finding Winnie, she described it as "full of wonderful things to bring to life; a sea of white tents at the army barracks, a parade of ships crossing the ocean in 1914, The London Zoo..."

From the very beginning I was excited to paint the parade of ships.

"Nobody had ever tried to float so many people and animals across the Atlantic Ocean before.

I sketched the image above, which was how I imagined the parade. I read that Harry and Winnie had been on board the S.S. Manitou, one of the many merchant ships escorted by warships in formation across the Atlantic Ocean.

It was pretty easy to find an image of the S.S. Manitou.

I could have just made up the other ships, but I thought, there are people who are serious about ships, and they will know I just made them up. So I went looking for reference photographs of the convoy. This was the only one I could find. It was war, after all, and the Canadian army didn't want the enemy to know they were coming, so people probably weren't encouraged to take snapshots.

And it's a pretty striking photograph, but it didn't tell me much about what the individual ships looked like. Then I found this painting by Lieutenant Commander Norman Wilkinson,
called Canada's Answer, which gave me a few more clues.

Then I found a very helpful website with an archive of primary documents from the Great War (gwpda.org) and found a list of all the ships and the order in which they sailed. I drew lines radiating from the S.S. Manitou and did image searches for those ships in lines, trying to get one whole set. It was a bit like bingo.

They sailed at sunset, so a red sky made sense, but it was also meant to suggest the war they were sailing towards. From the painting above I saw some ships were flying signal flags. I read (more than I ever imagined I might) about signal flags from my studio mate Brian Floca's extensive library, and just so you know, I tucked a secret message into that string of flags.

Do you notice anything else in this picture? The Canadian flag? The book had gone off to the printer and at the very last moment somebody noticed that the flag was the maple leaf. Which was designed in 1965. This convoy took place in 1914. Oops. Thank goodness we were able to fix it in the nick of time.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Illustrating Finding Winnie took over a year. The very last thing I did was the cover. Sometimes covers come easily, sometimes it's a torturous process. This one, while not exactly torturous, was a little elusive.

This was my first sketch, but I wasn't really thinking where the title would go.

Followed by about 87 color sketches, until I hit on Winnie holding onto Harry's boot. But the background didn't feel quite right. Nor did the type. We were down to the wire, the book had to go to print. We sent out the f&gs (folded and gathered proofs) with a placeholder cover, the one on the lower right.

We took a collective deep breath, and went back to the drawing board. And then Saho Fuji, the art director, came up with the yellow diamonds in a flash of inspiration.

Partly inspired by Cole's bedspread...

Partly by this old edition of Winnie the Pooh...

And possibly, from deep in our collective memory, this WW1 poster I found in the very early research stages.

We always knew we wanted to show Harry and Winnie on the front and Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh on the back.

One of my favorite parts of the book is the case cover, the surprise under the jacket.
When I saw this photo of WW1 soldiers...

Friday, October 23, 2015

It has come to my attention that some readers of A Fine Dessert have found the depiction of slavery troubling.

Every reader is entitled to their response and I don't expect to say anything which will change those concerns. I would, however, like to explain the choices I made so that a newcomer to the book might not be deterred from reading it and so that they may come to their own conclusion.

"Based on the illustrations, there are too many implications that should make us as adults squirm about what we might be telling children about slavery:
1) That slave families were intact and allowed to stay together.
2) Based on the smiling faces of the young girl…that being enslaved is fun and or pleasurable.
3) That to disobey as a slave was [a] fun… moment of whimsy rather than a dangerous act that could provoke severe and painful physical punishment"

1) At the risk of sounding exactly as the writer of one comment predicted, ("But we included something hard! But I researched slavery!”), evidence shows that many mothers were able to keep their children nearby, usually because it suited the plantation owners to increase their workforce. Historian Michael Tadman estimated that one third of enslaved children in the Southern States experienced family separation, which suggests that two thirds did not. Jennifer Hallam writes, in Slavery and the Making of America, “The bond between an enslaved mother and daughter was the least likely to be disturbed through sale.” This does not imply that those relationships were not constantly under threat. But it seemed reasonable that we might show a mother and daughter working together. I believe the author, Emily Jenkins came to the same conclusion. There is no father to be seen.
By showing an enslaved mother and daughter together, it is certainly a more positive portrayal of slavery than showing them wrenched apart. But it is not inaccurate. And the book is about different families making blackberry fool over four centuries.

2) I thought long and hard about these smiles.
In the first scene, the mother and girl are picking blackberries. I imagined this as a rare moment where they were engaged in a task together, out of doors, away from the house and supervision, where the mother is talking to her child. It is a tender moment, but the mother is not smiling. The girl has a gentle smile. She is, in this moment, not unhappy. I believe oppressed people throughout history have found solace and even joy in small moments.

click to enlarge

The second smile comes as the girl completes her task of whipping the cream. It’s hard work, which we see in the middle frame, and the smile was intended to convey pride in completing the task. She looks up to someone, presumably her mother, as if to say, “I did it!”

click to enlarge

In the next spread, the girl smiles timidly as she enjoys licking the spoon, but looks fearful as she descends the basement stairs.

click to enlarge

The dinner table scene is set up to show the deep injustice of the situation. The people who worked so hard over the dessert don’t get to eat it. A very small enslaved child pulls a cord to fan the white family throughout the duration of the dinner. The enslaved mother and daughter are somber and downcast. This scene seems to really strike a chord with young readers.
I have shown isolated moments of their day which may appear pleasurable, but I don’t think I have made slavery out to seem pleasurable or fun. As another commenter wrote, “Why shouldn’t a child and her mother, no matter where they are in the world or what their circumstances, share love and a smile in the course of their day? No matter how trying, inhumane or unacceptable the circumstances. Love is the most triumphant of emotions, bringing us through unspeakable trials and ordeals.”

click to enlarge

3) The act of having to hide in the cupboard to lick the scrapings from the bowl is the thing children have responded to most viscerally. They are horrified at how unfair it is. There is nothing whimsical about hiding in the cupboard. It conveys a complete lack of freedom.

Emily Jenkins says in her author’s note: “This story includes characters who are slaves, even though there is by no means space to explore the topic of slavery fully. I wanted to represent American life in 1810 without ignoring that part of our history. I wrote about people finding joy in craftsmanship and dessert even within lives of great hardship and injustice – because finding that joy shows something powerful about the human spirit. Slavery is a difficult truth. At the end of the book, children can see a hopeful, inclusive community.” I would add that this is a book for young children. It introduces issues of slavery in the context of a wider history. It is not intended to be the only story children will read. It does not fully depict the horrors of slavery, but I don't think such a depiction would be appropriate for this particular age group.

The way we look at pictures is incredibly complicated. I cannot ensure my images will be read the way I intended, I can only approach each illustration with as much research, thoughtfulness, empathy and imagination as I can muster.
Reading the negative comments, I wonder whether the only way to avoid offense would have been to leave slavery out altogether, but sharing this book in school visits has been an extraordinary experience and the positive responses from teachers and librarians and parents have been overwhelming. I learn from every book I make, and from discussions like these. I hope A Fine Dessert continues to engage readers and encourage rewarding, thought provoking discussions between children and their grown ups.

This blog has been edited to add the following:

It seems that very few people commenting on the issue of slavery in A Fine Dessert have read the actual book. The section which takes place in 1810 is part of a whole, which explores the history of women in the kitchen and the development of food technology amongst other things. A Fine Dessert culminates in 2010 with the scene of a joyous, diverse, inclusive community feast. I urge you to read the whole book. Thank you.